But state budget plans forgo Medicaid expansion

A new poll from the Health Foundation of Greater Cincinnati found a clear majority of Ohioans supports the Medicaid expansion.

The poll asked a random sample of 866 Ohioans, "Generally speaking, do you favor or oppose expanding Medicaid to provide health insurance to more low-income uninsured adults?" About 63 percent of respondents said they favor an expansion, with a margin of error of 3.3 percent.

The poll found a partisan divide on the issue: About 82 percent of Democrats support the expansion, while 55 percent of Republicans oppose it.

The question was part of the Ohio Health Issues Poll conducted between May 19 and June 2. The University of Cincinnati's Institute for Policy Research has conducted the poll for the Health Foundation each year since 2005.

"The Health Foundation supports the expansion of Medicaid in Ohio because we believe that it will have a positive impact on the health of uninsured Ohioans who will be newly covered by Medicaid," said Health Foundation CEO Jim Schwab in a statement. "We also believe that expansion of Medicaid will have a positive impact on Ohio’s economy. This positive impact was validated in an economic impact study that the Foundation helped underwrite earlier this year. The OHIP findings show that the majority of Ohioans also support the expansion."

Under the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare"), states are asked to expand their Medicaid programs to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, or an annual income of about $15,856 for a single-person household and $32,499 for a family of four.

For the first three years, the federal government would pay for the entire expansion. Following that, the federal government would phase down its support for the expansion to 90 percent of the costs, where it would indefinitely remain.

Earlier this year, the Health Policy Institute of Ohio released an analysis that found the Medicaid expansion would insure nearly half a million Ohioans and save the state about $1.8 billion in the next decade.

Although Gov. John Kasich supports the expansion, his Republican colleagues, who control the Ohio House and Senate, have so far passed on the expansion in budget plans and legislation.

In an April interview with CityBeat, Michael Dittoe, spokesperson for Ohio House Republicans, said the proposed federal commitment to the Medicaid expansion is unprecedented, which, according to Dittoe, makes Republican legislators skeptical that the federal government can live up to such obligations in the long term.

Bipartisan legislation introduced this week in the Ohio House and Senate would reform the Medicaid program — supposedly in a way that lowers costs without cutting services. But the legislation wouldn't take up the Medicaid expansion.

City plans to move forward as some council members suggest a repeal

In a 2-1 ruling today, the Hamilton County Court of
Appeals reversed a lower court’s ruling and said the city’s plan to semi-privatize its parking assets is not
subject to a referendum and may move forward.

But opponents are pushing for a stay on the ruling as they work on an appeal, which could put the case in front of the Ohio Supreme Court.

For the city, the ruling means it can potentially move forward with
leasing parking meters and garages to the Greater Cincinnati Port Authority for a one-time
payment of $92 million and an estimated $3 million in annual increments. The city originally planned
to use the funds for development projects, including a downtown grocery
store and the uptown interchange, and to help balance the city’s budget
for the next two years.

But critics, including those who led the referendum
efforts, are calling on the city to hold off on the lease. They argue
the plan, which raises parking meter rates and expands meters’
operation hours, will hurt downtown business.

In a statement, City Manager Milton Dohoney praised the ruling, but he clarified that the city will not be able to allocate parking plan funds until potential appeals of today’s ruling are exhausted or called off.

“The City cannot commit the money in the parking plan until there is legal certainty around the funds. Once there is legal certainty, the Administration will look at the budget to determine if there are items that may need to be revisited and bring those before Members of City Council, as appropriate,” he said.

Jason Barron, spokesperson for Democratic Mayor Mark Mallory, says the city will now be able to re-evaluate current plans for the
budget and other projects.

“Council will get a chance to look at the budget again and
undo some of the stuff that they’ve done, but some of the cuts will
definitely stay — that way we continue to move towards balance,” he
says.

But first, the city must follow through with legal
processes to get Judge Robert Winkler’s original order on the parking
plan lifted, which will then allow the city and Port Authority to sign the lease.

Already, some council members are pushing back. Following the ruling, Democratic council members Chris Seelbach and Laure Quinlivan announced that they plan to introduce a motion that would repeal the parking plan.

But Barron says City Council would need six out of nine votes to overrule Mallory and other supporters of the parking plan, which he says is unlikely.

At today’s City Council meeting, Quinlivan and Seelbach were unable to introduce the motion, which has five signatures, because the motion requires six votes for immediate consideration and to overrule the mayor, who opposes a repeal. The motion also needs to be turned into an ordinance to actually repeal the parking plan.

In a statement, Democratic mayoral candidate John Cranley criticized the ruling and city. He said the plan
should be subject to referendum: “This decision affects
an entire generation and shouldn’t be made by people who are trying to
spend a bunch of money right before an election, while leaving the bill
for our kids to pay.”

Democratic Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls, who is also running for mayor, praised the ruling in a statement.

“My goal is that proceeds from the parking proposal are used to put the city on a path to a structurally balanced budget by 2017,” she said.

Qualls said she will introduce a motion that calls on the city administration to draw up a plan that would use parking funds on “long-term investments that support long-term fiscal sustainability,” including neighborhood development, other capital projects, the city’s reserves and the city’s pension fund.

The ruling also allows the city to once again use
emergency clauses, which the city claims eliminate a 30-day waiting
period on implementing laws and make laws insusceptible to referendum.

Judges Penelope Cunningham and Patrick DeWine cited legal
precedent and the context of the City Charter to rule the city may use
emergency clauses to expedite the implementation of laws, including the
parking plan.

“Importantly, charter provisions, like statutes and
constitutions, must be read as a whole and in context,” the majority opinion
read. “We are not permitted — as the common pleas court did, and Judge
Dinkelacker’s dissent does — to look at the first sentence and
disassociate it from the context of the entire section.”

Judge Patrick Dinkelacker dissented, claiming the other
judges are applying the wrong Ohio Supreme Court cases to the
ruling.

“In my view, the charter language is ambiguous and,
therefore, we must liberally construe it in favor of permitting the
people of Cincinnati to exercise their power of referendum,” Dinkelacker
wrote in his dissent.

The parking plan leases the city’s parking meters and
garages to the Port Authority, which will use a team
of private operators from around the country — AEW Capital, Xerox,
Denison Parking and Guggenheim — for operations, technology upgrades and
enforcement.

The city originally argued the parking plan was necessary
to help balance the budget without laying off cops and firefighters and
pursue major development projects downtown.

City Council is also expected to vote today on an alternative funding plan to build a grocery store, luxury apartment tower and garage on Fourth and Race streets downtown. The project was originally attached to the parking plan.

Dohoney asked City Council in a statement to pursue the alternative plan today.

“We are asking Council to pass the development deal today so that the developers have the city’s commitment and can move ahead with their financing,” he said.“If we wait any longer on the parking deal, we put this deal at risk. With the housing capacity issue downtown and decade-long cry for a grocery store, we must move forward.”

CityBeat will update this story as more information becomes available.

Updated at 1:39 p.m.: Added comments from the city manager’s statement.

Got questions for CityBeat about, well, anything? Submit themhere, and we’ll try to get back to you in our first Answers Issue.

In a 2-1 ruling announced today, the Hamilton County Court
of Appeals reversed an injunction holding up the city’s plan to
semi-privatize its parking assets, allowing the city to move on with the
plan and continue the use of emergency clauses. The plan, which CityBeat covered in further detail here,
will raise $92 million in upfront money and at least $3 million in
annual increments for the city, which the city planned to use to help
balance the city budget and pursue a slate of development projects,
including a downtown grocery store. But critics argue the plan will lead
to a spike in parking rates and goes too far in expanding operating hours
for parking meters, which they say could hurt downtown business. CityBeat will have more on this story later today.

City Council will vote today on whether it will move on
with using $12 million in urban renewal funds to build a downtown
grocery store, luxury apartment tower and parking garage to replace
Pogue’s Garage. The Budget and Finance Committee already approved the project
in a 7-0 vote Monday. If the full session of City Council approves the
project, construction could begin late this year or early 2014, which
means likely completion in 2015 or 2016.

Gov. John Kasich was unclear on whether he’ll support anti-abortion measures
passed by the Ohio House and Senate in their budget bills. The governor
reiterated that he’s “pro-life,” but he said he’s not sure if the
measures go too far. The budget bills would effectively defund Planned
Parenthood, use federal funds for pro-abstinence, anti-abortion crisis
pregnancy centers and allow the state health director to shut down
abortion clinics by making it more difficult for them to get required
transfer agreements with hospitals.

Cincinnati Children’s Hospital ranked No. 3 in a new U.S. News and World Report for pediatric hospitals. The hospital also ranked No. 1 for pediatric cancer care.

Kasich: “I’m pro-life...”

Speaking at Bowling Green State University in northwestern Ohio yesterday, Gov. John Kasich was unclear on whether he’d use his line-item veto powers to remove anti-abortion provisions from a budget bill.

When asked about the issue by a student from the
University of Toledo Medical Center, Kasich responded, “First of all,
I’m pro-life.” He added, “We’ll have to see how this proceeds through
the House and the Senate conference committee and have just got to wait
and see how it goes, then I’ll make a decision as to whether I think it
goes too far or doesn’t, but keep in mind that I’m pro-life.”

The Ohio House and Senate recently passed budget bills
that would defund Planned Parenthood and fund anti-abortion crisis
pregnancy centers with federal funds. The Ohio Senate, which goes second
in the legislative budget process, also added a provision that could be used by the
state health director to shut down abortion clinics.

Under the Ohio Senate budget’s new rules, abortion clinics
would be unable to set transfer agreements with public hospitals, and established agreements could be revoked at any time and without cause by the state health director. At the same time, if a clinic can’t establish a transfer
agreement, it could be shut down with no further explanation by the
state health director.

The rules allow abortion clinics to set agreements with
private hospitals, but abortion rights advocates argue that’s much more
difficult because private hospitals tend to be religious.

State regulations already require transfer agreements
between ambulatory surgical facilities, including abortion
clinics, and hospitals,
but the Ohio Senate budget encodes the regulations into law and adds
further restrictions.

Transfer agreements are typically used to provide emergency or urgent care to patients with sudden complications.

Opponents of abortion rights, including Denise Leipold of Right to Life of Northeast Ohio, have praised the budget measures for promoting “chastity” and “abstinence.”

During budget hearings, several Republican legislators said Planned Parenthood is being defunded in part because it provides abortion services.

Planned Parenthood is legally forbidden from using public
funds for abortions. It currently provides the services through private
donations.

Kellie Copeland, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice
Ohio, criticized the budget bills and Kasich’s lack of clarity in a
statement: “This appalling agenda is out of touch with Ohio values and
we need Gov. Kasich to pledge to keep it from becoming law.”

The Ohio House and Senate must reconcile their budgets through conference committee before a final version reaches Kasich’s desk. At that point, Kasich could veto the entire bill, reject specific portions with his line-item veto powers or sign the bill in its entirety.

Downtown grocery advances, city pension in trouble, county to investigate “double voters”

Got questions for CityBeat about, well, anything? Submit themhere, and we’ll try to get back to you in our first Answers Issue.

City Council’s Budget and Finance Committee approved a development plan for Fourth and Race streets to build a downtown grocery store, a luxury apartment tower and a garage that will replace Pogue’s Garage. The project will cost $80 million, with the city paying
$12 million through a five-year forgivable loan and private financing paying for the remaining $68 million. The city’s loan is being financed through urban renewal
funds, which are generated through downtown taxes and can only be used
for capital investment projects downtown. The project was originally attached to the city’s plan to semi-privatize its parking assets, but the city administration says the urban renewal funds opened up after a hotel-convention center deal collapsed.

The city’s pension fund saw a return of 12 percent in
fiscal year 2012, but the amount of money the city owes and should
contribute to the pension fund continues to go up.
The higher costs will likely force City Council to put more money
toward the pension, which means less money for other services. City Council has underfunded the pension system by varying
degrees since 2003 — a problem that was further exacerbated by the
economic downturn of 2008, which cost the city’s pension fund $102
million. Consultants suggested City Council view the pension fund
as “not being of good health” and make changes that would help make the
pension fund more “robust” and less volatile.

As county and state officials move to investigate and potentially prosecute 39 “double voter” cases, local groups are pushing back with warnings that the investigations could cause a chilling effect among voters. Most of the cases cover voters who mailed in an absentee
ballot then showed up to vote on Election Day. Although the voters voted
twice, their votes were only counted once. Critics of the investigations, including Hamilton County Democrats, cite Ohio Revised Code Section 3509.09(B)(2),
which says voters who show up to vote on Election Day after filing an
absentee ballot should be given a provisional ballot. Hamilton County
Republicans say they’re not prejudging anyone and just want an
investigation.

Following a report that found Ohio’s juvenile correction facilities are among the worst in the nation for rape and other sexual assaults against incarcerated youths, the state is assigning assessors to the facilities to ensure proper protections and improvements are being put in place.

The Greater Cincinnati Port Authority is looking to expand its coverage to better market the region. The Port Authority’s plans call for enlisting 18 counties across Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky.

Got questions for CityBeat about, well, anything? Submit them here, and we’ll try to get back to you in our first Answers Issue.

Even without the parking plan, the city passed a budget with no public safety layoffs and is moving forward
with plans for the Uptown interchange project, a downtown grocery store, a new garage to replace Pogue’s Garage, Wasson Way and the Smale Riverfront Park. The turnaround has
prompted some critics to question whether city officials were being
honest when they cited a list of potential problems if the city failed
to semi-privatize its parking assets to raise funds, but Mayor Mark
Mallory and supporters say a lot changed between the time the threats
were made and now, including tax revenues coming in at $4.5 million
better than projected.

The Columbus Dispatch says Gov. John Kasich has found himself “playing defense”
in the current budget cycle — a sharp contrast to the budget cycle in
2011. Both the Ohio House and Senate have greatly changed Kasich’s original budget plan. Instead of
taking up Kasich on his plan to expand the sales tax while lowering the
rate, cut income taxes by 20 percent across the board and cut small
business taxes, the House approved a 7-percent across-the-board income tax
cut and the Senate replaced the House plan with a tax cut aimed at small businesses. Both
chambers also rejected the Kasich-backed, federally funded Medicaid
expansion and the governor’s education funding plan.

Estimates for Cincinnati’s Horseshoe Casino improved last month,
coming in at $2 million more than April’s estimates. The $20 million
estimate is still nearly $2 million less than the casino received on
opening month.

Plan also cuts taxes for businesses, restores some education funding

In a party line 23-10 vote today, the Republican-controlled Ohio Senate approved a $61 billion budget plan for fiscal years
2014 and 2015 that takes multiple measures against legal
abortions, aims to cut taxes for small businesses and partly restores education funding cut in the previous 2012-2013 budget.

The budget plan gives a large amount of attention to
social issues, particularly abortion. Most recently, the Ohio Senate added an amendment that could be used by the director of the Ohio Department of Health to close down abortion clinics.

The amendment bans abortion clinics from establishing transfer agreements with public hospitals, forcing the clinics to make such agreements with private hospitals,
which are often religious and could refuse to deal with abortion clinics. Under the amendment, if the clinics can’t reach a transfer agreement, the state health director is given the power to shut them down.

Abortion rights groups claim the amendment will likely be used to shut down abortion clinics or force them to dissolve their abortion services.

The bill also makes changes to family services funding
that effectively defund Planned Parenthood, a family planning services
provider that is often criticized by conservatives for offering abortion
services, even though it does so exclusively through private donations.

The bill also redirects some federal Temporary
Assistance for Needy Families funds to crisis pregnancy centers, which
effectively act as the anti-abortion alternative to comprehensive family
planning service providers like Planned Parenthood.

The changes continue a conservative push on social issues that began in the Ohio House budget (“The Chastity Bunch,” issue of April 24).

Supporters praise the bill for “protecting life” and promoting “chastity” and “abstinence,” but critics are pushing back.

“Today the Ohio Senate turned its back on the health care needs of Ohio’s women and paved the way for family planning centers and abortion clinics to be closed across the state. If Gov. (John) Kasich doesn’t remove these provisions from the budget, the unintended pregnancy rate will rise, cancer will go undetected and women who need abortion care will not have safe, legal facilities to turn to in some communities,” said
Kellie Copeland, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio, in a
statement. “This budget will put the lives of thousands of Ohio women at risk if Gov. Kasich fails to line-item veto these dangerous measures.”

The Ohio Senate plan also scraps Ohio House plans to
cut income taxes for all Ohioans by 7 percent and instead aims to cut
taxes for small businesses by 50 percent.

Republicans claim the tax cut will help small businesses,
which they call the state’s “job creators.” But conservative and liberal
groups have criticized the plan.

In an analysis, Policy Matters Ohio,
a left-leaning policy think tank, claimed the tax cut will
inadvertently benefit “affluent passive investors” and “partners in law
firms and other partnerships.”

Given that, Zach Schiller, research director at Policy Matters, says the plan will do little for Ohio’s economy.

“The fastest growing small businesses are not making money
because they’re investing heavily in their operations — in marketing,
research and sales,” Schiller says. “So if they’re making anything,
they’re investing it by and large in the business, so they’re not likely
to be able to benefit very much from this.”

He adds, “Meanwhile, you’re going to have passive
investors who have no role in adding employees and partners in law
firms, architecture firms, accounting firms and other kinds of
professional organizations who will personally benefit from this in a
way that I think is unlikely to generate more employment.”

Instead of focusing on tax cuts, Schiller argues the state
should be increasing direct investments, particularly in education
and human services.

“This is bad policy, and many supporters are errantly
pushing it under the guise of putting more money in the hands of
‘job-creators.’ But this is based on a flawed understanding of what
creates jobs,” wrote Scott Drenkard of the Tax Foundation. “The
businesses that actually create jobs are not small businesses or big
businesses; they are businesses that are growing. And that type of
business is virtually impossible to target with a tax incentive.”

The budget plan restores about $717 million in
education funding, but that’s not enough to outweigh the $1.8 billion in education funding
that was cut in the 2012-2013 budget, which Kasich and the
Republican-controlled legislature approved in 2011.

The education funding increases will disproportionately favor the state’s property-wealthiest districts —
effectively giving the biggest funding increases to school districts
that can already afford to raise more money by leveraging high local
property values.

Stephen Dyer, an education policy fellow at the left-leaning Innovation Ohio, captured the disproportionate funding increases in chart form in a blog post:

The chart shows only 15 percent of funding increases will go to the property-poorest one-third of school districts, while a vast majority of the increases will go to the property-wealthiest one-third.

Health care advocates were also disappointed to see the
Ohio Senate pass on a federally funded Medicaid expansion, which would
allow anyone at or below 138 percent of the federal poverty level —
$15,856 for a single-person household and $32,499 for a family of four — to enroll in the government-backed health care program.

Kasich proposed expanding Medicaid in his original budget plan (“Smoke and Mirrors,” issue of Feb. 20), but Ohio legislators are skeptical of the expansion’s consequences.

As part of the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”), the
Medicaid expansion would be fully financed by the federal government for
the first three years. After that, federal payments would be phased
down to capture 90 percent of the expansion, where federal funding would
permanently remain.

Republican legislators, backed by Republican State
Treasurer Josh Mandel, are skeptical the federal government can afford
the expansion. There’s no historical precedent for the federal
government failing to meet its obligations to Medicaid, but
Republican legislators argue there’s also no historical precedent for
the federal government backing such large Medicaid expansions across the
nation.

The budget also fails to restore local government funding cuts that have been carried out during Kasich’s time in office. In comparison to fiscal years 2010 and 2011, local governments are receiving about 50 percent less aid from the state, leading to $22.2 million less funds for Cincinnati on an annual basis (“Enemy of the State,” issue of March 20).

When asked to explain the various cuts to education and local government funding in the 2012-2013 budget, Kasich spokesperson Rob Nichols told CityBeat in September 2012, “The reality is we walked into an $8 billion budget deficit. … We had to fix that.”

The Ohio legislature and Kasich must agree on a budget plan in time for a June 30 deadline.

Video provides best break for budget hearings

Here at CityBeat, we cover a lot of budget hearings, and they can very easily wear us down with their partisan squabbles and monotonous focus on details that everyone will forget about in a week or so.

Right now, we're watching the Ohio Senate budget hearings, which have so far involved Democrats repeatedly bringing up amendments only to get them shot down by the Republican majority. Very repetitive, very boring.

Thankfully, the Internet has given us the chance to take what we like to call "cat breaks." This video — arguably the greatest thing in the entire Internet — is the latest example:

Wealthy schools see best gains in budget plan

The Ohio Senate's budget plan for fiscal years 2014 and 2015 would restore about $717 million in education funding, but the gains wouldn't be enough to outweigh $1.8 billion in education cuts from the 2012-2013 budget, which was approved by the Republican-controlled Ohio legislature and signed into law by Gov. John Kasich in 2011.

The bill would also favor the state's property-wealthiest districts, which can already raise more money for local schools by leveraging their massive local property values.

About 85 percent of the wealthiest school districts will get funding increases, while 40 percent of the poorest rural districts receive no increases, according to Stephen Dyer, a former Democratic state representative and an education policy fellow at Innovation Ohio.

The chart shows the bottom one-third of school districts only get about 15 percent of the increases, while the top one-third are getting a vast majority of the increases.

Still, Dyer points out that the budget is increasing funding for urban, high-poverty areas, while rural areas are generally getting the smallest increases.

The budget would also include $250 million in one-time money for the Straight A Fund, which is supposed to entice innovation at schools around the state. When the program was first proposed in Kasich's budget plan, the Kasich administration asked for $300 million.

Even with the Straight A Fund, the funding increases wouldn't be enough to overcome $1.8 billion in cuts in the last biennium budget, which is a previous estimate
from progressive think tanks Policy Matters Ohio and Innovation Ohio that includes tax reimbursements for tangible personal property and
public utility property, federal stimulus funds and state aid to
schools.

In 2012, Cincinnati Public Schools was one of the many school districts to successfully pass a levy after dealing with years of cuts from multiple levels of government ("Battered But Not Broken," issue of Oct. 3).

The changes proposed by the Ohio legislature are the latest in a chain of attempts to reform the state's school funding formula, which has a history of legal and political problems.

Between 1997 and 2002, the Ohio Supreme Court issued four decisions that found the state's school funding formula unconstitutional because it relied too much on property taxes and failed to provide "a thorough and efficient system of common schools."

But 16 years later, critics argue the system still relies too much on property taxes. According to them, the reliance on property taxes drives inequality because property-wealthy areas can more easily leverage their high property values to fund good schools, while property-poor areas are generally left behind.

Kasich attempted to address the issues with his own rework of the education funding formula, but the rework was dismissed by the Ohio House and Senate — a victory for critics who deemed Kasich's plan regressive ("Smoke and Mirrors," issue of Feb. 20).

The Ohio legislature and Kasich must approve a budget plan by June 30.

Got questions for CityBeat about, well, anything? Submit them here, and we’ll try to get back to you in our first Answers Issue.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved a Mill Creek sewer overhaul plan
that includes bringing back a long-buried creek in the area. The
unconventional strategy is the Metropolitan Sewer District’s (MSD)
attempt at dealing with storm overflow in a green, sustainable manner
that also saves taxpayers money — particularly in comparison to an
expensive deep underground tunnel that the EPA originally suggested. CityBeat previously covered MSD’s green plans in further detail here.

A law that would ban mandatory union membership is temporarily back on the Ohio House agenda,
leaving union advocates worried that Republicans are trying to push the
anti-union law, which supporters of the change call “right to work,” once again.
Still, lawmakers say they’re only giving the law one hearing as
required by House rules for legislation introduced early on in the
session. Under current law, employers and unions are allowed to agree to mandating union membership for employees, but the anti-union law would
bar that agreement. Many states have already taken up similar laws, and
they’ve been linked to a significant decline of unions around the
nation.

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine is partnering with Ohio
State Board of Pharmacy Executive Director Kyle Parker to continue the
fight against synthetic drugs. In a statement, DeWine’s office said the
partnership will help state officials expedite the process of banning
synthetic drugs as they are found. “Despite the success of House Bill 334,
which outlawed a multitude of synthetic drugs in 2012, rogue chemists
continue to create new, dangerous chemicals that fall outside of Ohio's
controlled substances law,” DeWine said in a statement.

Cost for vehicle registration in Ohio could go up under a plan being considered by state lawmakers.

Two more alleged voter fraud cases were sent to the county prosecutor.
So far, most of the Hamilton County voter fraud cases involve people voting twice —
supposedly on accident — by first early voting and then voting on
Election Day.

A Gillette commercial is at the center of the most important question of our time: How does Superman shave?